A gay hookup app goes straight

Joel Simkhai, founder of Grindr, talks about “Project Amicus,” his new friend-finding tool By Drew Grant

Salon.com features Grindr 'A gay hookup app goes straight'

Joel Simkai, a slender, young-faced man, is eating granola and yogurt when I meet him for coffee. He is the founder of Grindr, a location-based app that allows gay men to “connect with guys in (their) area” and “browse men.”  Since its launch, Grindr has grown to 2 million users and gained a reputation as something of a hookup widget for the gay community. (The app has a simple interface that shows photos of the closest 100 users at any one time, and allows you to chat and exchange photos with them.)

Now Joel and his team are about to launch their second program, code name Project Amicus, which has been referred to as a “Grindr app for straight people.” “Users can expect a unique mobile app experience unlike anything currently on the market that caters to how women and men communicate together,” boasts the press packet for new project. But does a straight version of Grindr even make sense? According to Joel, Amicus will do far more than help people have sex (which he argues is not what Grindr is for in the first place).

I interviewed Joel about his two apps — and what, exactly, the point of a “straight” Grindr would be.

How did Grindr get started?

Throughout my whole life I’ve always been walking into a room and wondering, “Who’s that?” Or when you walk into a subway and make eyes with someone, and then nothing happens. There’s all these missed connections throughout your daily life, and I just feel like, “I wish I could have said something.”

And as a gay man, you’re always wondering who else is gay. I used to use online chat rooms and dating sites for many, many years. I would talk to people in Minnesota, or Ohio, or wherever. And then as it got more advanced, I’d talk to people in New York. But it’s a big scene; there are a lot of people here. So location wasn’t even the biggest factor in meeting other gay men. At the end of the day, I realized it would have to be new technology.

When the second-generation iPhone came out with the GPS unit and the ability to write and distribute the apps, all these things kind of came together. All the pieces fell into place and I said, “This is it.”

Foursquare became famous for being able to track friends, and Dodgeball allowed you to see how you were connected socially (i.e., how many friends you had in common) to anyone else checked into a given space. How would you say Grindr is different from that?

Well, I’m not interested in helping you find your friends. I’m really interested in having you meet new people. It’s like, “You and me, we’re both here, let’s get together and see if there is some kind of chemistry.” There are so many invisible walls, and Grindr is really just a tool to break those down. I was just at New York Pride, and I met an Australian couple who said they had met over Grindr and they just got married.

Do you consider Grindr a dating app?

I’m less interested in what happens after you meet. Maybe you like them, maybe you just want to chat, and maybe you’re like, “This is not for me, I want to get out of here.”

If Grindr is at least partly being used to meet guys and hook up, how will this project you’re launching work for straight women?

Well, this new app is an evolution: taking what we know from Grindr and putting it on the next level. It’s not even focused on dating. Its code name is Project Amicus, and it’s a lot more about friendship, like a girl meeting another girl, and they are both straight. Or she can meet a gay guy, or whatever. It’s really about helping you meet people. There is that issue right now, of “How do I meet new people? Where should I go? What should I do? I’m bored!” And it’s really a tool to help you figure that out.

Will Project Amicus be open to men too, then?

Yes, though we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about women when developing this project. I’m a guy; I have a harder time getting into the mind-set of a woman. We’ve definitely made extra efforts to think about the woman: what she wants, what she’s comfortable with, who she wants to socialize with.

In terms of making a “Grindr for women,” I think, “Well, isn’t locating the nearest straight dude just called ‘Going to a bar’?”

Right. Well, I still think of both programs in terms of someone who wants to meet new people, people they want to meet, that special someone, someone to spend time with.

So you don’t think of Grindr as being focused on hookups or one-night stands?

I don’t care what people do, as long as it’s legal. You know, I’m happy people are using the program. It’s a whatever-you-want-it-to-be app. Some people want to hook up, some want to network professionally. You know we did a survey, and the majority of people said they used Grindr to find friends. It’s all kinds of things.

So if it’s a friend thing, will Grindr’s app feed its profiles into Project Amicus?

No. They are two separate apps.

So there is a distinction in terms of the purpose of what these two programs are supposed to do?

The new project is a social app. Grindr is somewhere between a geo-social app and a dating tool. People from Grindr can join the new project, but we keep them separate, because they are two different things.

The Sunday Times features Grindr in it's 'The Sunday Times App List '

The App List is your definitive guide to must-have games, tools and distractions for your iPhone, iPod, iPad, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone 7 or tablet. Don’t miss it this weekend.

The Sunday Times App Awards

ShanghaList.Com features Grindr ‘Popular gay mobile app Grindr now back online in China.’

ShanghaList.Com features Grindr 'Popular gay mobile app Grindr now back online in China.'

Grindr, the gaydar-in-your-pocket mobile app that’s taken the international gay community by storm is now back online in China after an extended period of being blocked by the Great Firewall.

The way it works is simple — you turn on the app on your iPhone, it identifies your physical location, and in just a matter of seconds, profiles of other gay men will start appearing on your screen, starting from those closest to you. And you’ll be able to chat with any of them instantaneously. It’s like magic! Only better!

News of the unblocking has created limited excitement, however, among members of the Chinese gay community as they’ve since moved on to the multitude of Grindr clones that have appeared like a thousand flowers blooming.

Nobody knows exactly why Grindr was the only gay geosocial dating app to be blocked by China — it’s possible that as the first of many such apps, it was the first to appear on the Net Nanny’s radar. Well now that her royal highness has changed her mind about blocking Grindr, nobody’s really complaining either.

Grindr recently announced it crossed 2 million users in 192 countries (including, we assume, the Vatican City). Now that the world’s most populous nation of homos is able to freely access Grindr, it’s safe to assume they’ll reach their third million in no time.

P.S.:
1. For those of you wondering, other popular gay geosocial dating apps in China are Jack’d and BoyAhoy.

2. And for those of you wishing there were similar apps for heteros, you’ll be glad to know they already exist! Try Skout, or Flurv!

The New York Times features Grindr ‘In the Calculations of Online Dating, Love Can Be Cruel ‘

By SCOTT JAMES

The New York Times features Grindr 'In the Calculations of Online Dating, Love Can Be Cruel '

Heidi Funai sat perched at the swank bar at Circa in San Francisco’s Marina district, the city’s mecca for straight singles. As men sidled up, she noted which ones might be there to mingle and which wore wedding bands.

“The real world is a lot of work,” said Ms. Funai, an attractive 30-something with shoulder-length, wavy blond hair freed from her Vespa helmet.

She had scootered into the real world to talk about the virtual realm of online dating. Ms. Funai once found love online, and now that she is back to search again, she has noticed a disheartening trend: it is getting increasingly cruel out there in cyberdating.

“The social contract is broken with online dating” in a way that does not exist in real life, Ms. Funai said. She has used online dating sites for nearly a decade — and she does not like what she sees happening.

Since the current recession began, the popularity of online dating has surged — memberships are up and new matchmaking portals have emerged to take advantage of the demand — industry growth of up to 30 percent is expected in the next year or two, according to the tracking site DatingService.com. This has also led to an increase in behavior that would earn a slap in person, but has become de rigueur on the Internet.

Never-answered messages, explicit requests for sex, fake bios, outdated photos and insults are ubiquitous. Ms. Funai said men in their 50s had contacted her, completely unsolicited, just to say she was too old. “They wouldn’t do that in person,” she said, “but online …”

It is love in the time of ones and zeros, the rudimentary language of computers. In the digital age, everything must at some point be reduced to this basic construct of choice: One or zero. Yes or no. On or off. Subscribers to online dating sites are forced to come up with a list of their desires. Red hair? Yes or no. Over 30 O.K.? Please check a box.

The result is that millions are now trained to be dismissive based on detailed and sometimes arbitrary criteria. Combine this growth in fantasy checklists with the anonymity of the Web, and it gets ugly.

Laurie Davis, an online dating analyst at eFlirtexpert.com has observed the problem — with men. “They forget about the chivalry factor sometimes when they date online,” Ms. Davis said.

Who comes up with these measures? In most cases, it is the Web site’s owners. At OkCupid.com, however, it is left up to members to suggest dating criteria, and the result is an astonishing example of the need by some to quantify the ideal mate.

Sam Yagan, OkCupid.com’s co-founder and a Stanford M.B.A. alumnus, said the site started with this premise: Can you use math and data analytics to match people up? With the goal of creating a screening process that was “more human than a checkbox,” Mr. Yagan said, the site takes thoughts from its 4.2 million monthly users to build the questions. Users answer as many as they like — the average is 233.

With such a high number of expectations, no wonder some become disgruntled.

And that might explain what is happening in the gay community and its rapid embrace of the iPhone application Grindr. When activated, a grid of dozens of tiny succinct profiles fills the phone screen, using GPS technology to tell users how far away they are from each another.

“17 feet away,” the message said one evening when fired up at a cafe in the Castro district — a disproportionate number of men were then seen holding their phones and looking over their shoulders. Less than a year old and limited to gay men, Grindr already has 500,000 users.

“We keep it PG-13,” said Joel Simkhai, the company’s founder. Although some use the application to facilitate casual hook-ups, no lewd language or photos are allowed.

There is also the reality that users stand a good chance of actually seeing each other in person, not hiding anonymously behind a keyboard, enforcing accountability for one’s conduct.

“It’s more consistent with real life,” Mr. Simkhai said, “a little less in your face.”

A version for heterosexuals is in the works.

But even this emerging slice of the online dating world is not immune from random acts of malice. Almost as soon as Grindr was created, a rogue Web site started called Guys I Blocked On Grindr, dedicated to publicly burning men considered undesirable.

Perhaps there is no way to separate the more public forms of love and the more public forms of cruelty.

Still, Ms. Funai will continue to try to navigate the minefield of online dating, although as a tech marketing manager, she knows that applying ones and zeroes to relationships is problematic.

“What everyone is looking for is chemistry,” she said, “and that’s not quantifiable.”

Celebration of Gay Pride Masks Community in Transition

By SCOTT JAMES Published: June 25, 2011

Celebration of Gay Pride Masks Community in Transition

The rooftop deck of the San Francisco Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Community Center offers a sweeping view of Market Street, and to bring in much-needed revenue, the area could soon be leased to Medjool, a nightclub that one Yelp review called “Frat boy meets Girls Gone Wild.”

That an essentially straight establishment could crown one of San Francisco’s most prominent gay landmarks might seem contradictory to some, but it is emblematic of the times.

When thousands converge on the city this weekend for the San Francisco Pride celebration and parade, they will find a community at a complex crossroads. Although experts estimate that 15 percent of adults here claim a sexual orientation other than straight — the highest percentage in the nation — longtime gay and lesbian institutions are struggling.

Examples are everywhere: Lyon-Martin Health Services, the women’s health clinic founded in 1979, has financial troubles; South of Market’s Eagle bar, a fixture for 30 years, closed last month. In the Castro neighborhood, turnover among merchants is so rampant that it has become difficult to keep track.

Interviews with more than a dozen experts, gay rights leaders and residents paint the picture of a multilayered transition. To some, the community is simply evolving, as it has in the past, to become less parochial. (The Medjool deal, for example, would include an innovative lesbian, gay and transgender job-training program at the site.)

Others, however, believe recent gay rights victories and greater societal acceptance have led to complacency.

“We’re at a tipping point as far as America’s embrace of L.G.B.T. issues,” said Fred Sainz, spokesman for Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group. “But tipping points can go both ways.”

Perhaps most significant, however, is change from within: a new generation of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders who see the world, and themselves, quite differently. Born during the AIDS pandemic, when sex was linked to death, and having matured in the more tolerant “Will and Grace” era, they are rewriting the old paradigms of sexual and gender identification.

Many have rejected being called “gay” or “lesbian,” and instead prefer “queer,” an all-encompassing word that was once considered offensive.

Jessica Fields, a researcher at the Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality in San Francisco, is conducting a study of the generational trend by interviewing 18- to 24-year-olds from the city’s broad gay spectrum.

Although her study is not yet complete, Dr. Fields said many young people were finding traditional labels of sexual orientation too restrictive. “They felt that ‘queer’ had more possibilities — that things were more open,” she said.

And movable. “They rejected the idea that if they were with a woman now they would always be with women,” Dr. Fields said.

Notions of gender also seem fluid.

Rebecca Rolfe, executive director of the L.G.B.T. Community Center, which runs programs for youth, said, “We’ve got a lot of folks who don’t identify as male or female.” Instead, some use the ambiguous word “boi” to describe themselves.

When asked to describe herself, Alix P. Shedd, 28, a local artist who has taken hormones to transition from man to woman, said, “A word is a box — that’s the problem.”

Read more @ http://tinyurl.com/3tvzcfh

Business Insider features Grindr ‘Straight Reporter Briefly Goes Gay In The Name Of Journalism’

By Noah Davis

Straight Reporter Briefly Goes Gay In The Name Of Journalism

The New York Observer sure is into experiential journalism these days.

First, they send Nate Freeman out to flaunt the ban on smoking in public parks.

Now, Freeman, who is straight, is trying to meet dudes on Grindr, the social network for single gay men.

The results? Predictably fantastic.

Five minutes after creating an account on Grindr and uploading a good-looking picture of myself holding a bottle of Chambord — when in Rome, right? — I received a message from a man wearing a button down shirt and flashing a toothy, wholesome smile. He was 32 tears old, six feet tall and 400 feet away.

“Very cute,” he chatted me.

“Oh cool,” I chatted him back. “Hey, wanna meet near 321 44th for a smoke?”

“I wanna fuck,” he responded a few seconds later.

“I don’t think I’m ready for that,” I said. “It’s 4:00 in the afternoon?”

“Damn,” he replied. “BJ?”

I’ll give him credit for persistence. “OK, have to be honest,” I said. “I’m a writer for a newspaper, and I’m writing a profile of grindr, so I wanted to try it out.”

“I’d love to play with u : )” he said.

Next week, Freeman will, well, we don’t have any idea. That’s his job.

Grind Up On This! A Straight Man Uploads a Cute Pic to Grindr

Grindr founder Joel Simkhai explains his hot-boy network before it hooks up with the heteros.

By Nate Freeman

Grind Up On This! A Straight Man Uploads a Cute Pic to Grindr

THERE HAVE BEEN MANY HAPPY BOYS who have found their perfect matches on Grindr, the social network for single gay men, but founder Joel Simkhai has a favorite.

“There was a serviceman in the Air Force, stationed in Baghdad and Kuwait,” Mr. Simkhai said on the phone from Los Angeles, where he lives. “He used Grindr to connect with other gay men in the military—and locals!”

The smartphone application, which debuted in March 2009, employs G.P.S. technology to conjure up the profiles of gay men who are in close proximity to the user. Since its introduction, more than two million men in 192 countries have logged on. Through the social network’s chat channel, users can arrange anything from a friendly coffee date to a random quickie.

And it’s discreet. The soldier stationed in Baghdad didn’t ask, didn’t tell and didn’t care.

“He was just so thankful,” Mr. Simkhai recalled. “It literally brought tears to my eyes, and I thanked him for his service to our country.”

BORN IN TEL AVIV, Mr. Simkhai grew up in Long Island and attended Tufts. After receiving a double major in international relations and economics, he headed to New York, where, despite being young, attractive and out of the closet, Mr. Simkhai found the hook-up scene less than satisfying.

“I’ve always kind of wondered who’s gay around me,” he said. “I’ve always had the situation where I make eye contact and nothing emerges.”

Mr. Simkhai reached out to Dodgeball creator Dennis Crowley and asked if he could develop an add-on for his startup—which was later bought by Google and inspired his next project, Foursquare—for gay men to pinpoint the exact location of other gay men.

When he declined, he decided to create the thing on his own. The second generation iPhone came equipped with G.P.S., so Mr. Simkhai asked a software developer in Denmark to lay the groundwork for a startup that could utilize that technology.

Grindr has been wildly successful, at least among its target audience. Now, two years after its launch, the app is poised to grow its user base to include women and heterosexuals. Code-named Project Amicus, the new arm of the site will debut later this year.

Being straight, I had only recently become familiar with the Grindr app. I was first struck but the name, the racy insinuations of that word, the way the d and the r rub up against one another. Nice branding!

Mr. Simkhai, however, plays coy on the subject of Grindr’s sexual implications. “That’s not what it’s really about,” he said. “We looked at a coffee grinder, a social stew, mixing people up; that was the inspiration for the name.”

We told him the name reminded us of hardcore foreplay.

“Even if you were to grind two people together, that’s not sex,” he said. “It is intimate, and that’s cool. We’re not scared of intimacy.”

In that case, I asked Joel if he thought it would be O.K. if I got a Grindr account of my own.

“I guess you can try it out,” he said. “It’ll be a good test.”

FIVE MINUTES AFTER creating an account on Grindr and uploading a good-looking picture of myself holding a bottle of Chambord—when in Rome, right?—I received a message from a man wearing a button down shirt and flashing a toothy, wholesome smile. He was 32 years old, six feet tall and 400 feet away.

“Very cute,” he chatted me.

“Oh cool,” I chatted him back. “Hey, wanna meet near 321 44th for a smoke?”

“I wanna fuck,” he responded a few seconds later.

“I don’t think I’m ready for that,” I said. “It’s 4:00 in the afternoon?”

“Damn,” he replied. “BJ?”

I’ll give him credit for persistence. “OK, have to be honest,” I said. “I’m a writer for a newspaper, and I’m writing a profile of grindr, so I wanted to try it out.”

“I’d love to play with u : )” he said.

A FEW DAYS AFTER I talked to Mr. Simkhai, I heard back from the military guy he mentioned. He’s a sergeant, first class, works in air traffic control and used Grindr to keep in touch with his boyfriend—they met on a military base in Mississippi—while on duty in Baghdad.

“There were about four or five other men on Grindr at my base,” he said over the phone. “We actually put together a volleyball team, all of the Grindr people. We didn’t name ourselves ‘The Grindrs’ or anything, but we were a team.”

As he moved from one corner of the country to another, the sergeant would fire up his Grindr app to touch base with the homosexual community there.

“You can go anywhere in this world, and you can launch Grindr, and you can find other gay men feet from you,” Mr. Simkhai said. “It tells our user, ‘You’re never alone.’”

That sounded good to me. When Project Amicus launches, a new mass of people will find friends, partners and one-night stands just feet away. Straights may never be as direct about sex as their gay counterparts tend to be, but the new app will at least facilitate the courtship process. All you have to do is whip out your iPhone, that instrument in your pants pocket, and say hello.

Slate Magazine features Grindr ‘The Gay Bar Its new competition By June Thomas’

The Gay Bar. Its new competition.

By June Thomas

Slate Magazine features Grindr 'The Gay Bar Its new competition By June Thomas'

The days—and nights—when gay bars had a monopoly on same-sex social lives are long gone. As much as contemporary queers may romanticize the gay bar as a sanctuary in a lonely world, most of us now have lots of safe spaces, both real and virtual, available to us.

Not convinced? Google “gay group” and the name of your town, and the search engine should cough up a range of organizations from sports leagues to book groups, gay churches to the local men’s chorus. (I swear, half the same-sex couples who make it into the New York Times‘ “Vows” section claim to have met in gay hiking groups.) Over the last three decades, a clean and sober culture has developed as an alternative to the bar scene. New York’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center hosts at least 12 regular AA meetings, as well as a dozen other 12-step recovery groups, and events like NYC Queer + Sober are designed to “provide a safe and fun experience to the sober LGBT community during Gay Pride.”

When it comes to nightlife, gay revelers have more options than ever. Gay men have the circuit party scene—lavish multiday, multivenue annual events, such as the Palm Springs and Miami white parties—where the emphasis is on grand spectacle and production values that exceed anything that would be possible at a neighborhood bar. In some cities, groups use the Web to organize “guerrilla gay bars,” a sort of flaming flash mob in which homosexuals descend unannounced on a straight bar and turn it gay for one night only. And in most cities, freelance promoters produce regular “parties” at straight venues as an alternative to the “gay every day” bar scene. The trend took off in the 1980s, when the community’s desire for variety outpaced the supply of gay venues, and accelerated after 2000, when it became easier to publicize events via email.

Lesbian party promoters are especially busy: Even in the largest metropolis, lesbians rarely have more than one or two bars to choose from, so it’s natural for women to crave new vistas. Maggie Collier, of Maggie C Events, currently runs two weekly women’s parties in Manhattan. “Stiletto,” on Sundays, is a daytime event at the swank Maritime Hotel, and since it’s an outdoor bash, shorts and flip-flops are appropriate. On Wednesday nights at “Creme de la Femme,” the code is “dress to impress.” When I asked why she set that tone, she told me, “We should set the bar really high for variety. We deserve every possible option. Everything that the heterosexual nightlife community has, we ought to have those options as well.”

This sort of event is not popular with gay-bar proprietors. Former owner Elaine Romagnoli told me, “They will empty your room out. Your customers will all go to that event and come back at 3 a.m., when you have an hour to go, and they’re already trashed.” As easy as it is to understand the bar owners’ annoyance at losing their regulars to the irresistible appeal of the new and different, Collier is right when she says, “I don’t think that we should stop ourselves from giving women more options just because we respect—and I definitely do—these establishments that have been around forever and that do it every night.” And given the appealing economics, these regular parties are probably here to stay. Party promoters generally work on a commission basis, taking a percentage of the bar takings, so naturally their overhead is a fraction of the bars’.

Perhaps the gay bar’s biggest new competitors, however, are gay dating sites and apps. “Luke,” a gay man in his mid-30s, told me that new technology has been “the single most important development” in the world of gay dating. (Like some other people I interviewed for this series, he preferred not to use his real name when discussing his romantic life.) “From the time I came out in 1993 until about 1999, there was only one reliable place on a given night where you could peruse a catalog of gay men: at the bar or club. Now I have the Internet and Grindr for that.”

I first heard about Grindr from Irish writer Colm Toibin. At a fancy-pants New York panel on “Authors in the Age of the Internet” sponsored by the London Review of Books last April, then-55-year-old Toibin told a charming, shaggy-dog story about his adventures in gay social media. He described how he’d fantasized about a piece of technology that would marry a gay-dating service with GPS to create a device that would tell you “there’s a guy if you turn left.” Then he discovered that such a thing exists; it’s called Grindr. Grindr is a location-based phone app that displays a grid of photographs of other members in your immediate vicinity, arranged by distance. If you like the look of someone’s picture and blurb, you can chat and arrange to get together. I love the directness of the sample chat on the company website: “Hey bud I like your profile.” “Thanks man. You too. Where u at?” [Sends map] “Let’s meet. Here’s a photo.” Who said the art of seduction is dead?

Grindr launched in March 2009 and currently has more than 2 million users, one-half of them in the United States. Eight thousand guys sign up for the service every day. Grindr is strictly for Adams seeking Steves, but the company says that Project Amicus, an app for straight and lesbian users, will launch this summer.

Read more @ http://www.slate.com/id/2297608/

MADE IN LA Presents ‘Bebe: The After Party’

MADE IN LA Presents 'Bebe: The After Party'

Red carpet, bright lights, snapping paparazzi, model mayhem and ripping runway shows—must be Fashion Week in the City of Angels.

Thursday night, MADE IN LA, a creative group of individuals including DJ Alicia, Cisko Casas, and Justin Howard, hosted a fashion show showcasing Bebe’s 2011 spring collection at the venue supperclub in Hollywood.

The celebrities came out in full force to check out the new line and lit up the red carpet prior to the show. From Grey’s Anatomy star Courtney Hope to supermodel Jaimie Hilfiger to Cirque du Soleil creative director Christine Marcello, a plethora of Hollywood talents came out looking red carpet ready.

Unlike any fashion event you’ve ever seen, ‘Bebe: The After Party’ is an interactive playground, featuring everything from provocative performances to innovative instillations to acrobatic antics, and of course, a riveting runway show featuring the hottest trends from Bebe.

Best described as “club wear with a touch of Hollywood glamour” Bebe’s 2011 spring collection is designed for any woman looking to turn heads and make the world her personal catwalk.

Read more @ http://www.neontommy.com/news/2011/03/made-la-presents-bebe-after-party

CBS News features Grindr on ‘HowAboutWe joins a growing list of mobile dating apps promising to help you find love on the go.’

CBS News features Grindr on 'HowAboutWe joins a growing list of mobile dating apps promising to help you find love on the go.'

When it comes to your love life, not surprisingly, there’s an app for that. A few actually. But one new addition to the mobile dating scene promises to get people to stop staring at that little screen, and start being social. Popular dating site HowAboutWe launches its new location-based iPhone app today, answering the age-old dating question: “Where can I meet someone?”

The answer in the smartphone era, it turns out, is right around the corner — and right now.

Here’s how it works. Users post a perfect first date description in the app, then get connected in real time to one or more people nearby who are game.

For instance, a guy in DC who writes: “How about we grab a hot dog at Ben’s Chili Bowl,” might get an instant “yes!” moments later from a girl three blocks away — and that afternoon they’re enjoying chili dogs together.

The start of something beautiful? Perhaps. The app features real-time access to thousands of nearby date ideas, adding a little serendipity to digital dating.

Still like looking at that little screen when it comes to love and romance? Ok, fine — better try these apps:

Skout: This app lets you see who’s around you and browse their profiles, including photos, notes and comments, as well as chat with multiple users.

Grindr: This app was designed with gay guys in mind, using a location-based mobile network to determine a user’s location and instantly connect them with nearby matches.

Zoosk: Zoosk lets you receive “flirts” on your phone from nearby users, upload pics and tag them, and peruse a list of local singles.

Lovetricity: Prefer a party trick to woo ladies at the bar? Try this one: two people place a thumb on the app’s “love-sensing” pads and the app measures the chemistry — from “Burning Hot” to “On Life Support” — between you two.